Obama Leads Democrats Back to the Wilderness

For all of the hysteria leading to President Obama’s immigration executive order, it turned out to be much ado about little. Except that Obama just dispersed the remaining asset so desperately needed by the Democrats in 2016, perhaps beyond.

Of course the hysteria was justified when reckoning Obama’s constitutional by-pass. Yet at the same time overwrought, when his action is seen as mere feather-puffing exhibitionism in his habitual pattern of statutory abuse throughout his entire presidency.

Obama’s willful refusal to enforce boarder security, five years pre-dating this EO, deliberately nullifying our nation’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, is ground enough for Republicans to formally charge the president with failing to uphold the Constitution. What’s new this time around?

Nothing in this EO affects the reality on the ground. More fouette than grand jete, and the timing for its narrow spin gives Republicans ample time for a proper grand pas....

Obama’s EO is tepid impotent dishwater, hardly worth interrupting the Republicans’ early trek over the river and through the woods to Grandma’s house for Thanksgiving. Jumping up and down in protest might burn off a few stuffing and apple tart calories; but don’t tear an ACL doing it.

Border security couldn’t get much worse, absent constructing multiple EZpass fast lanes. Genuine deportations (as opposed to turning back people at the border) are already laughably low as interior enforcement actions are fewer than arrests from border patrol interdictions -- as rare as even they seem to be -- barely exceeding the number of tailgaters at a couple of SEC college football games this past Saturday.

And as we see from the DOJ prioritization of targeting illegals for deportation, Obama’s decree merely restates his status quo de facto amnesty style pardon of drug dealers, sex abusers, gun offenders, and drunk drivers.

ICE is carrying a case load of 1.8 million aliens who are either in removal proceedings or have already been ordered removed. Less than two percent are in detention, which is the only proven way to ensure departure.

As of the end of July 2013 there were 872,000 aliens – nearly half of ICE’s total docket – who had been ordered removed but who had not left the country.

The State Department continues to issue tens of thousands of visas annually to citizens of countries that refuse to take back their countrymen who are ordered removed from the United States. Many of these are violent criminals.

And who from the ranks of currently undocumented aliens for more than five years would register for a temporary deportation stay, subject to revocation anytime, with dim prospects of gaining permanent legal status?

Moreover this EO is a caustic brush-off to those 6 million law abiding would-be immigrants, and those already here legally awaiting their turn in the naturalization process.

Most egregiously Obama has disowned his most loyal patrons, the urban poor -- overwhelmingly disenfranchised black Americans -- who counted on Obama to restore what now are never-to-be resurgent economic opportunities freeing them from crippling dependency on government largess that consigns generations to the purgatory of subsistence poverty and prolonged despair.

Obama delivered little incremental value, only vacant gestures, to those 4 million plus border jumpers, just a few days ago counted as probable Democrat voters. He had one chance to deliver an incendiary provocation to Republicans while actually granting citizenship to millions, but did neither.

And so, immigration, the last remaining election talking point for Democrats, joins Obama’s unilateral disarmament, alongside “no boots on the ground.”

In the world of distressed financial assets and insolvency proceedings, a special competency accretes to people who can organize an orderly liquidation. Despite Barack Obama’s incompetence nearly everywhere else, he has been a master at dispersing Democrats’ electoral assets.

The Democrats’ tactical brilliance, at least since Bill Clinton, has been to shape their moralizing self- approbations into election issues. Abortion, gay marriage, women’s oppression, overseas ground wars accompanied by claims of torture and unjust internment, universal health care, income inequality, environmental justice, and immigration reform topped the list. These issues delivered votes because they appealed to the vulnerable, convinced that the progressive elites would erase their pain; and the Democrats skillfully avoided resolving these issues, successfully recycling them every two and four years.

Yet under Obama, these issues have either been settled, or he has forfeited the moral high ground through incompetence, wholesale loss of trust, backfired policy moves, or duplicity finally outrunning the good will of voters who have realized the remaining issues are either phony or will never be resolved by Democrats.

Infrastructure is talk but no action, for anything other than discredited wind turbines and failed green energy boondoggles. Elizabeth Warren would like to say, “We built infrastructure”. But what exactly? When is the last time the federal government built anything, or enabled something to be built except for a guided missile cruiser or F-18 fighter jet? Killing the Keystone XL Pipeline, denying jobs while handing out an ideological victory to environmental lobbyists, along with spending nearly a trillion for the 2009 Stimulus that achieved nothing except saving federal union jobs for two years, has discredited any Dem claims to the infrastructure promises.

Obama’s unilateral military disarmament, withdrawal from global leadership, fecklessness in prosecuting terrorists, cowering before thugs and dictators as they invade sovereign territories, forfeiting hard won positions in Iraq and Afghanistan, lying about an embassy and consulate security catastrophe, exchanging terrorists for a US Army deserter -- all national security asset giveaways restoring the Democrats’ reputation that they are deliberately soft-headed and cannot be trusted.

Drone warfare, indiscriminant battlefield killings foreclosing acquisition of live intelligence assets, combined with NSA spying on Americans, has denied the Democrats any moral authority in defining or managing a just war, and diluted their claim to be protectors of civil liberties.

Financial regulation and Federal Reserve policies that have choked community banks, and derailed middle America prosperity, joined by near-zero interest rates needlessly depriving 60 million seniors of perhaps $150 billion of retirement income annually.

Income inequality has proven to be a phony issue as the federal government rakes in record tax receipts while the so-called top income earn 1% but pay 24% of all taxes with a 33% effective rate; the top 20% pay 60% of all taxes; the middle class pay less than 10% of all taxes with effective rates 1/3 of the 1%. Another Elizabeth Warren fizzle.

War on women and racism, thoroughly debunked by resounding defeats of US Senate incumbents Kay Hagan (NC) and Mark Udall (CO) with their interminable flogging of contraception and Planned Parenthood issues, and the resounding elections of Joni Ernst (I),and of Tim Scott (SC), the first black in South Carolina elected to federal office since Reconstruction.

Obama’s race baiting transforming white guilt into seething contempt for a man and a party that promised racial healing, instead has provoked racial animus, and salted the promised fields of harmony with divisiveness and distrust.

So, what remains of the Democrat party election issues? Not much. Certainly neither jobs nor economic growth, for which Democrats have nothing to say but remain the most vital unresolved issues on the minds of voters, delivering Republican majorities across the country, from the US Senate, to governorships, to state houses.

Joe Lieberman, former US Senator, runner-up 2000 presidential aspirant and Al Gore’s failed VP running mate, complained in 2003 that the Democrats’ obsession with big government, and anti-war policies would “send us Democrats to the political wilderness for a long time”

Barack Obama in 2008 gave Dems a reprieve from that consignment. But only a brief respite, a fleeting glimpse through the thick underbrush. Obama has led the Democrats back to the wilderness, for which this time there may be no escape from its claustrophobic canopy.

For all of the hysteria leading to President Obama’s immigration executive order, it turned out to be much ado about little. Except that Obama just dispersed the remaining asset so desperately needed by the Democrats in 2016, perhaps beyond.

Of course the hysteria was justified when reckoning Obama’s constitutional by-pass. Yet at the same time overwrought, when his action is seen as mere feather-puffing exhibitionism in his habitual pattern of statutory abuse throughout his entire presidency.

Obama’s willful refusal to enforce boarder security, five years pre-dating this EO, deliberately nullifying our nation’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, is ground enough for Republicans to formally charge the president with failing to uphold the Constitution. What’s new this time around?

Nothing in this EO affects the reality on the ground. More fouette than grand jete, and the timing for its narrow spin gives Republicans ample time for a proper grand pas....

Obama’s EO is tepid impotent dishwater, hardly worth interrupting the Republicans’ early trek over the river and through the woods to Grandma’s house for Thanksgiving. Jumping up and down in protest might burn off a few stuffing and apple tart calories; but don’t tear an ACL doing it.

Border security couldn’t get much worse, absent constructing multiple EZpass fast lanes. Genuine deportations (as opposed to turning back people at the border) are already laughably low as interior enforcement actions are fewer than arrests from border patrol interdictions -- as rare as even they seem to be -- barely exceeding the number of tailgaters at a couple of SEC college football games this past Saturday.

And as we see from the DOJ prioritization of targeting illegals for deportation, Obama’s decree merely restates his status quo de facto amnesty style pardon of drug dealers, sex abusers, gun offenders, and drunk drivers.

ICE is carrying a case load of 1.8 million aliens who are either in removal proceedings or have already been ordered removed. Less than two percent are in detention, which is the only proven way to ensure departure.

As of the end of July 2013 there were 872,000 aliens – nearly half of ICE’s total docket – who had been ordered removed but who had not left the country.

The State Department continues to issue tens of thousands of visas annually to citizens of countries that refuse to take back their countrymen who are ordered removed from the United States. Many of these are violent criminals.

And who from the ranks of currently undocumented aliens for more than five years would register for a temporary deportation stay, subject to revocation anytime, with dim prospects of gaining permanent legal status?

Moreover this EO is a caustic brush-off to those 6 million law abiding would-be immigrants, and those already here legally awaiting their turn in the naturalization process.

Most egregiously Obama has disowned his most loyal patrons, the urban poor -- overwhelmingly disenfranchised black Americans -- who counted on Obama to restore what now are never-to-be resurgent economic opportunities freeing them from crippling dependency on government largess that consigns generations to the purgatory of subsistence poverty and prolonged despair.

Obama delivered little incremental value, only vacant gestures, to those 4 million plus border jumpers, just a few days ago counted as probable Democrat voters. He had one chance to deliver an incendiary provocation to Republicans while actually granting citizenship to millions, but did neither.

And so, immigration, the last remaining election talking point for Democrats, joins Obama’s unilateral disarmament, alongside “no boots on the ground.”

In the world of distressed financial assets and insolvency proceedings, a special competency accretes to people who can organize an orderly liquidation. Despite Barack Obama’s incompetence nearly everywhere else, he has been a master at dispersing Democrats’ electoral assets.

The Democrats’ tactical brilliance, at least since Bill Clinton, has been to shape their moralizing self- approbations into election issues. Abortion, gay marriage, women’s oppression, overseas ground wars accompanied by claims of torture and unjust internment, universal health care, income inequality, environmental justice, and immigration reform topped the list. These issues delivered votes because they appealed to the vulnerable, convinced that the progressive elites would erase their pain; and the Democrats skillfully avoided resolving these issues, successfully recycling them every two and four years.

Yet under Obama, these issues have either been settled, or he has forfeited the moral high ground through incompetence, wholesale loss of trust, backfired policy moves, or duplicity finally outrunning the good will of voters who have realized the remaining issues are either phony or will never be resolved by Democrats.

Infrastructure is talk but no action, for anything other than discredited wind turbines and failed green energy boondoggles. Elizabeth Warren would like to say, “We built infrastructure”. But what exactly? When is the last time the federal government built anything, or enabled something to be built except for a guided missile cruiser or F-18 fighter jet? Killing the Keystone XL Pipeline, denying jobs while handing out an ideological victory to environmental lobbyists, along with spending nearly a trillion for the 2009 Stimulus that achieved nothing except saving federal union jobs for two years, has discredited any Dem claims to the infrastructure promises.

Obama’s unilateral military disarmament, withdrawal from global leadership, fecklessness in prosecuting terrorists, cowering before thugs and dictators as they invade sovereign territories, forfeiting hard won positions in Iraq and Afghanistan, lying about an embassy and consulate security catastrophe, exchanging terrorists for a US Army deserter -- all national security asset giveaways restoring the Democrats’ reputation that they are deliberately soft-headed and cannot be trusted.

Drone warfare, indiscriminant battlefield killings foreclosing acquisition of live intelligence assets, combined with NSA spying on Americans, has denied the Democrats any moral authority in defining or managing a just war, and diluted their claim to be protectors of civil liberties.

Financial regulation and Federal Reserve policies that have choked community banks, and derailed middle America prosperity, joined by near-zero interest rates needlessly depriving 60 million seniors of perhaps $150 billion of retirement income annually.

Income inequality has proven to be a phony issue as the federal government rakes in record tax receipts while the so-called top income earn 1% but pay 24% of all taxes with a 33% effective rate; the top 20% pay 60% of all taxes; the middle class pay less than 10% of all taxes with effective rates 1/3 of the 1%. Another Elizabeth Warren fizzle.

War on women and racism, thoroughly debunked by resounding defeats of US Senate incumbents Kay Hagan (NC) and Mark Udall (CO) with their interminable flogging of contraception and Planned Parenthood issues, and the resounding elections of Joni Ernst (I),and of Tim Scott (SC), the first black in South Carolina elected to federal office since Reconstruction.

Obama’s race baiting transforming white guilt into seething contempt for a man and a party that promised racial healing, instead has provoked racial animus, and salted the promised fields of harmony with divisiveness and distrust.

So, what remains of the Democrat party election issues? Not much. Certainly neither jobs nor economic growth, for which Democrats have nothing to say but remain the most vital unresolved issues on the minds of voters, delivering Republican majorities across the country, from the US Senate, to governorships, to state houses.

Joe Lieberman, former US Senator, runner-up 2000 presidential aspirant and Al Gore’s failed VP running mate, complained in 2003 that the Democrats’ obsession with big government, and anti-war policies would “send us Democrats to the political wilderness for a long time”

Barack Obama in 2008 gave Dems a reprieve from that consignment. But only a brief respite, a fleeting glimpse through the thick underbrush. Obama has led the Democrats back to the wilderness, for which this time there may be no escape from its claustrophobic canopy.